Hey, what's up, triathletes?
Taren here.
The Rio Olympics is coming up, and today, we are going to run down the men's and the
women's race.
I'm going to talk about how the pros stack up, who my picks are to win Olympic gold and
get on the podium.
Stick around for it.
I'm going to start off with the men's triathlon in the Olympic, and to be honest with you,
I think it's a bit of a crap shoot.
There hasn't really been a single triathlete in 2016 for the men that has stood out.
People have been battling injuries, battling inconsistencies, or surgeries, so I'm not
really sure how this race is going to stack up.
If I had to pick who's going to win, I would say that it's going to be Mario Mola, for
a number of reasons.
For starters, he's currently the number two ranked triathlete in the world in the Olympic
distance races, and when you break down how many points all the athletes get per race,
he's leading that.
Over the course of 2016, he's been showing up ready to race and done better than anyone
out there.
Mola is the fastest runner in the field, and who won in the 2012 Olympics?
It was the fastest runner, Alistair Brownlee.
In the Olympic distance triathlons, it typically does come down to who has the strongest run
on the day.
He's raced five times this year, nabbing four wins in Gold Coast, Yokohama, Mooloolaba,
and Abu Dhabi.
Mola's run speed alone makes him a top contender, but why I pick him to be my number one choice
to win is because I think he's going to be coming in with a bit of a chip on his shoulder,
representing his countryman Javier Gomez, who just a week ago ended up breaking his
elbow in a bike crash.
He would've been my number one pick if this didn't happen, and these guys are buddies,
so I think that Mola is going to be coming in with a little bit of extra heart, thinking
about his buddy Javier.
As a fellow short and stubby triathlete, my heart's with you, too, Javier.
Poor, poor Javier.
My number two pick is Jonathan Brownlee.
He's currently ranked third in the world, and he has the third most points per race
of any athlete coming into it.
Johnny's done really well this year racing against nothing but the best of the best in
all four triathlons that he's been in.
They've all been ITU circuit races.
He's got three second place finishes in Stockholm, Leeds, and Cape Town, and then he's got a
third place finish at the Gold Coast.
Johnny's racing style is a lot like his older brother Alistair's, where he's really twitchy
fast, coming first or second in every discipline.
He's a little bit less injury-prone, which is good for Johnny, so it keeps him racing,
but he doesn't have that same ability that Alistair has to be absolutely dominant on
the day.
That's why he's got less wins than Alistair has.
My third pick for the men's Olympic triathlon is Richard Murray.
This could be a little bit controversial, because Murray is actually ranked 31st in
the world right now.
The thing about that is, is that he's only raced in one ITU circuit race, staying out
of the mix of basically all of the big races.
He does have the second most points per race, and that's based off of just the sole second
place finish that he got in ITU Abu Dhabi.
Abu Dhabi.
The other two races that he went into this year were both wins, but they weren't against
the best of the best, so it's hard to know how he stacks up against all the other athletes
toeing the line in the Olympics.
Will he win?
I don't think so.
Will he be on the podium?
I absolutely think so.
My dark horse for the race is actually Alistair Brownlee.
It's kind of weird to think that the guy that I believe to be the single best one-day triathlete
ever is a dark horse, but he's been so injury-prone over the last four years that we don't really
know how fit he is, and he's coming off a number of surgeries since his gold medal finish
in 2012.
He's only raced three times this year.
The first race that he went into at the beginning of the year was the first race that he had
been in since he had ankle surgery back in 2015.
He was way down in the field, but then he followed that up more recently with two wins
at Stockholm and Leeds.
He's showing signs of being the Alistair of old, but can he show up on that day and be
healthy?
I don't know.
Getting into the women's race, I think that this is a lot more clear who the favorite
is.
If you said anyone other than Gwen Jorgensen to be on top of the podium with a gold medal
around her neck, I think you'd be silly.
As of today, she's raced in four ITU circuit races.
Two of them were wins in Yokohama and Leeds, but her 13 race winning streak was snapped
early on in the year with a second place finish at Gold Coast.
Just yesterday, she finished third in Hamburg.
Is she coming in as the best Gwen, or is she just holding back and resting up?
I don't know.
What's clear, though, is that Gwen is hands-down the most talented female triathlete maybe
ever, and if she shows up on the day, fires on all cylinders, there's no reason that she
won't be on top of the podium.
The rest of the women's field, honestly, I don't have a hot clue how it's going to end
up.
There has been a ton of jockeying for those second and third place finishes over the last
18 months as Gwen has shown her dominance, but there's no one that has shown themselves
to be a top contender.
The woman that ended up snapping Gwen Jorgensen's winning streak could make noise.
It's Britt Helen Jenkins, but in her two other races of the year, she was sitting at third.
Very respectable, but she sits sixth in the world, and sixth in average points per race.
Certainly not a dominant player out there.
I think one woman that over the course of the year has shown that she's got the potential
to compete with Jorgensen on a good day is Bermuda triathlete Flora Duffy.
She currently sits at first in the world and second in behind Jorgensen in average points
per race.
She picked up one win at the Stockholm ITU triathlon, rounded out by a second, a third,
and two fourth place finishes in all the other ITU circuit races that she went into, and
these are against the best competition out there.
She's certainly shown that she's done everything that she can to be strong in 2016.
At the start of the year, it was looking like Jodie Stimpson could make a run at being a
contender in the Olympics, with back to back wins at Abu Dhabi and Mooloolaba, but then
Stimpson kind of fell off with her performance, placing 12th at Gold Coast when the competition
got a little bit stiffer, and then she's just been edging in and out of podium placing since
then.
Going off the board and picking a dark horse for the women's race, I am going to go with
Kiwi Andrea Hewitt.
Sure, she's a little bit older in the field at 34, and she might not have those twitchy
fast legs of the 20-year-olds out there, but she's proven that she can stay healthy, show
up ready, and she is always in and out of second and third place podium finishes.
If you've got to pick somebody that's going to maybe nab a win on Gwen's off day, if she
does have an off day, you got to pick somebody who's at least in the mix, and will be there.
Knowing that Andrea Hewitt is probably going to be in that second, third, fourth place
mix, I got to say that if Gwen does have an off day, Andrea Hewitt probably has a chance
to win.
There you have it.
Those are my calls for who is going to do well at the Rio Olympic Triathlon of 2016.
Let me know how you feel about these picks in the comments below, who your picks are,
where you think your favorite athletes are going to end up.
I do want to give a special shout out to my fellow Winnipeggers, Tyler Mislawchuk and
Sarah-Anne Brault.
Proud to say that you've both run circles around me in triathlons around the province.
Just so you know, some of my buddies have a habit of winning Olympic gold medals.
I think that's just via osmosis, maybe, just being around me.
I don't know.
I'll be doing a recap of the Rio Olympic Triathlon after the races take place, and I do the same
preview and recap of the Kona Iron Man World Championship when that happens.
If you don't want to miss any of that, and you're not subscribed already, make sure to
subscribe to Triathlon Taren.
Thank you for watching.
As always, happy and hard training, and good luck in your next triathlon.
Mooloolaba.
Abu Dhabi.
Mooloolaba.
I think they just pick where these races are based on cool names.